amuck-landowner

special offer: Atom with 3TB HDD for $29/month and more (Raspberries)

R

rds100

New Member
Verified Provider
Here is a special offer from us. It includes one small dedicated server. This are one-of-a-kind - we only have one of these motherboards

left and they are not available anymore to buy, so the offer will not reappear unless there is a cancellation.

For those who don't know our servers are located in Varna, Bulgaria.

Server spec is:

CPU: Atom D2500 (2 cores, 1.86GHz, CPU benchmark score 404)  
RAM: 2GB DDR3  
HDD: 1x 3TB Seagate SV35 series, model ST3000VX000-9YW166 with 0 reallocated sectors and 4382 Power On hours (6 months runtime) 
Bandwidth: 4TB on 100Mbps port  
Price: 29 USD / month or 85 USD / quarter  

So this is basicly a big 3TB network attached disk, hosted somewhere far away from you. It's ideal for storing backups of backups, adding

it to a tahoe-lafs cluster, etc. And i believe it's the cheapest 3TB of dedicated storage you can currently rent.

For people in EU - 29USD is currently a little less than 21 EUR, but there is +20% VAT for EU end users.

The server comes with either 1 IP, or 5 free IPs. If you choose 5 IPs, a /29 subnet will be assigned (SWIPed) in your name.

Remote reboot is included with all servers. We will give you an IP KVM for the initial setup since "normal" partitions can be max 2TB large

and the HDD is 3TB, which will cause some trouble with the automatic installation and gpt+grub.

Order link for the 3TB server here - https://www.fitvps.com/members/cart.php?a=add&pid=35


Why choose us:
- We are a small privately owned, 100% debt free company, in business since 1998  
- We are RIPE LIR since the year 2000 - own the IP address space and the AS number  
- We own all the server hardware  
- We own all the network hardware, etc.  
- We are not french ;-)
- We don't have stupid cancellation policies and will not make you write us a registered letter if you decide to cancel your server.  
- We know what we are doing
- I'm a nice guy. Sometimes ;-)  

Our regular dedi offers can be found here - https://www.fitvps.com/members/cart.php?gid=2

Now the other offer - a Raspberry Pi server with all the bells and whistles, for $10/month.

What it includes:

- Raspberry Pi with 512MB RAM and 700MHz ARM processor

- 32GB USB storage (actual usable about 29GB)

- remote reboots

- automatic reinstallations, OS available: raspbian, pidora, Arch

- rescue mode

- one IPv4 address

- /64 IPv6 available on request

Order link here - https://www.fitvps.com/members/cart.php?a=add&pid=35

The previous offer / discussion about the Raspberry Pi servers -

Reviews? Here is one:

FAQ:
Q: test-ip?  
A: https://www.fitvps.com/test-ip

Q: looking glass?

A: http://lg.fitvps.com

Q: warez allowed?  
A: No

Q: porn allowed?  
A: No

Q: torrents allowed?  
A: if we don't receive any complaints, we don't know you are torrenting. If we start receiving complaints you have to either stop or leave.

Q: IRC?  
A: please don't, unless it's just you peacefully chatting.

Q: ipv6?  
A: Yes

Q: rDNS?  
A: via ticket. For ipv6 routed netblocks we can delegate it to your name servers

Q: "email marketing"?  
A: HELL NO!

Q: Can we transfer the ownership of a server?
A: No. You can cancel, we will put it back in stock and the other person can order it. But no transfers.

 
 
R

rds100

New Member
Verified Provider
R

rds100

New Member
Verified Provider
Payment methods: paypal.

And two drives are possible, but it's no longer so cheap then. And i believe that for backups it's better to have two different servers in two different places with one drive each, than a single server with two drives.
 
W

willie

Active Member
Yeah, if it's 2x then it's up there with a Hetzner server with 2x 3tb drives but those have i7 cpu's that are much faster than an Atom.  I feel likely to get something like that since I'm looking for primary storage (so it should be raid) and cpu, rather than just backup.  I notice there's also a new OVH cloud storage product (hubic.com) with very aggressive pricing, though terrible bandwidth (10 mbit cap, I guess intended for home and mobile backup) but I may be able to use it.  Your Atom server is still an excellent offer and very tempting of course.
 
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R

rds100

New Member
Verified Provider
I could add a second HDD of the same type (3TB SV35) for $20 / month more or $140 one time + $1 / month. But you are right, if you need more than just storage the Atom looks funny compared to an i7 from Hetzner or somewhere else.
 
raj

raj

Active Member
That Raspberry PI hosting idea is golden.  At $10/mo, you're full ROI in about a year.

$40 for USB3.0 32GB USB stick

$35 for Raspberry Pi.

lets say ~$25 for mounting hardware/power/bandwidth/IPs 

$5 miscellaneous (small SD card for boot)

That's just about $100 per Pi, and those are retail pricing.

And your users get the novelty of running on a Pi, the nice fuzzy feeling of having their own dedicated server, and for most low end server needs, it's perfect.

Great job!
 
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R

rds100

New Member
Verified Provider
@raj actually the USB stick is around $25, the Pi around $40-$42, other hardware and parts don't know... maybe $10-$15. We haven't really done exact calculation for the other hardware and labor needed to make it work, but it doesn't matter anyway..

The ROI should be slightly better than your calculations. Of course we don't know yet how often the Pi fails, how often the USB sticks fail, etc., so we must be a little more conservative with the prices. Maybe after some months / a year when we have more data about the hardware failures we could push the price with $1-$2 lower.

I was always thinking of making an option to pay some setup fee and then lower monthly fee. Most other raspberry Pi offers i've seen are like this, although they call it "colo". We will see, might do it if there if enough people are interested in such an option. Although our wouldn't be a colo because we make some hardware modifications to the Pi.
 
splitice

splitice

Just a little bit crazy...
Verified Provider
Neat idea with the Pi's,

I am not sure how you are doing the re-installations but honestly I would prefer a 64GB or 32GB sd card rather than USB stick. The automatic and re-installations are a really neat idea.

Features / Ideas:

  • Heat Sync & Forced cooling & moderate overclocking: Once you are more certain of the failure rate, this is definitely something you should look into. I have Pi's in production doing on-site monitoring under forced cooling (and slight overclocking) and haven't had any failures yet (1-2 years).
  • Build a Pi NAS in the enclosure combined with a 1TB hard drive and give out backup space, combined with custom images = poor mans cloud.
  • Work out and test your enclosure design ahead of time for maximum capacity and ensure there are no heating issues. Ideally all Pi's should be accessible and replaceable without interruption of service of any others
  • Try and get your pricing to LEB levels, its who you are competing with. Increase density, and reduce manual processes (i.e pre-rack Pi's dont rack for each order).

Just to give you an idea of what I have done with a few (20-30 - I don't know, I don't install them) Pi's for a local business here. We get a Raspberry Pi attach heatsyncs (bulk from an ebay seller). Using holes and standoff's we mount them either inside the system or in a case on top of the system. They are used for system monitoring (via a 2 port ethernet hub).

The first install was over a year ago now, I haven't heard of one failing yet. Had at-least one DOA so I suspect if they were going to fail it would be early in life. Our devices are moderately overclocked (930Mhz) and could probably go much higher.

I encourage you to keep working on this, its definitely a useful niche that if done is a proper and stable way could be very useful. Work on increasing density and features and it will be really useful for many applications (particularly if you ship out enclosures full of these to neighbouring DC's etc).
 
R

rds100

New Member
Verified Provider
@splitice thanks for the ideas :) We've already thought about most of these points:

SD card vs USB stick - my testing showed that USB sticks are faster. Also there were decent USB sticks available from multiple vendors, no such big choice for SD cards. And SD cards seem to have more compatibility problems. Also we wouldn't be able to do the automatic reinstalls if it wasn't a USB stick. I mean we could make some partition on the SD card where the installer lives, but you could delete it and the the Pi would be bricked, we would need to manually recover it, which is a pain.

Right now we believe the Pi is unbrickable by the customer with our current design. I.e. you can always run the installation and it will work.

Yes we can consider different sizes of USB sticks (from 8GB to 64GB). For now we have selected one model and size of USB stick - A-DATA S102 Pro 32GB. Which we hope will be reliable.

- There is already cooling (some small forced airflow around the Pis), although we don't put any heatsinks. I don't think we would ever do overclocking. I am looking and testing some other similar ARM based boards, with better / faster processors - like the Allwinner A10 1GHz, which could come at a similar price, but has better features and much better CPU.

- We could offer some backup space, true. Will think about it. Custom client supplied images for the Pi wouldn't be possible though. There is customization done by us to the OS images so they can work. You can still try to install your custom image through the Rescue Mode if you want though.

- The current enclosure design allows each Pi to be pulled out without affecting the rest. It is similar to how you pull out a hot swappable HDD. It doesn't allow for big density (since all Pis must be accessible from the front), but it's good for maintenance.

- If by LEB prices you mean $7/month - maybe we could do it with a smaller (cheaper) USB stick. However didn't want to risk it with some cheap sticks before we get more confidence in the hardware and reliability. Also i compared with other Pi offers out there and found out the prices are mostly OK. Maybe we will increase the included bandwidth to 500GB (to meet some of the other similar offers). Maybe we will also add another pricing option - to pay some initial setup fee, and then smaller monthly fee. You wouldn't own the Pi though, since we make some hardware modifications to it.

- There is still a lot of manual work involved (hardware modifications, custom racks, custom power solutions, etc.), but it's OK for now. This manual work is not a big expense for now.

- The Pis are preracked and some are ready to be activated. After you place an order and i click on the "Accept Order" button - the Pi is immediately delivered to you and you can install the OS.

- We have no plans for now to offer other locations. Most DCs would not accept custom hardware without extensive certifications (electrical, fire, etc.).
 
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splitice

splitice

Just a little bit crazy...
Verified Provider
@Nett

It wont matter the Pi doesnt even come close to well utilizing USB2

@rds100: interesting results with the USB stick, our results where different (although we use high end 32GB sd cards in ours as write speed is very important).

The certification is always an issue, I haven't looked into it myself but we haven't had any issues (using all off the shelf enclosed products however). I don't see why providing your power supply and similar parts where certified (as they should be), and all parts where (e.g power supply -> microUSB) off the shelf from an insurance point of view you would have too much trouble (not that I have tried that myself).
 
R

rds100

New Member
Verified Provider
@Nett the USB stick is capable of USB3, but the Raspberry Pi is with USB2 port, so it would work in USB2 mode.
 
R

rds100

New Member
Verified Provider
@splitice the main power supplies are certified - they are redundant industry grade 12V 80A power supplies. Then we have custom DC-DC converters (12V to 5V) and custom switchable PDU design (to be able to remotely stop / start the 5V power to each Pi), which is obviously not easily certifiable.
 
splitice

splitice

Just a little bit crazy...
Verified Provider
I would have to find out exacts, we did the tests a while ago. It was around 20-22MB/s for small block writing (4K) whereas the USBs tested (including a couple USB3 drives) maxed at 14-16MB/s. Ext3, Ext4 and XFS filesystems tested (no substantial difference).

Our heaviest write load is entirely 4K blocks, so thats all we tested.

Currently we are using Sandisk class 10's, pricing wasnt really any issue on this level for us though. Class 6's would probably give 95% of the same speed.
 
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R

rds100

New Member
Verified Provider
Results from the USB stick:

root@raspberrypi:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 46.256 s, 23.2 MB/s

root@raspberrypi:~# mount | grep sda2
/dev/sda2 on / type ext4 (rw,noatime,data=ordered)


The other ARM boards we are testing have SATA, se we will probably offer something with a true SSD for those who need better IO.
 
splitice

splitice

Just a little bit crazy...
Verified Provider
By the way I wasn't requesting sdcards purely for the IO, primarily as I thought you where doing something strange (like it mounted as /data). Although I am impressed with that IO.
 
Curious, could you run:

dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=4k count=64k conv=fdatasync
 
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